The Review of Economics and Statistics Vol. 100 No. 3 2018
Disability Benefit Take-Up and Local Labor Market Conditions
Abstract
Exploiting county-level variation in oil-producing areas from shocks to world oil and gas prices, we study how local labor market conditions affect disability take-up. We extend well-known previous work using a similar research design by analyzing a different price shock; a larger, more representative set of labor markets; and a more recent period marked by skyrocketing disability payments. Our estimated elasticity for SSDI payments with respect to earnings of −0.29 is surprisingly similar to earlier findings. Our preferred SSI elasticity estimate of −0.16 is smaller than previous findings, but we show that SSI programmatic changes explain most of the difference.
- DOI
- 10.1162/rest_a_00692
- Volume
- 100
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 416-423
- Language
- en
- Sources
- openalex crossref